partial string formatting

Question

Is it possible to do partial string formatting with the advanced string formatting methods, similar to the string template safe_substitute() function?

F

Answer 1

Here's a mildly-hacky regex-based solution. Note that this will NOT work with nested format specifiers like {foo:{width}}, but it does fix some of the problems that other answers have.

def partial_format(s, **kwargs):
    parts = re.split(r'(\{[^}]*\})', s)
    for k, v in kwargs.items():
        for idx, part in enumerate(parts):
            if re.match(rf'\{{{k}[!:}}]', part):  # Placeholder keys must always be followed by '!', ':', or the closing '}'
                parts[idx] = parts[idx].format_map({k: v})
    return ''.join(parts)

# >>> partial_format('{foo} {bar:1.3f}', foo='FOO')
# 'FOO {bar:1.3f}'
# >>> partial_format('{foo} {bar:1.3f}', bar=1)
# '{foo} 1.000'

Answer 2

Assuming you won't use the string until it's completely filled out, you could do something like this class:

class IncrementalFormatting:
    def __init__(self, string):
        self._args = []
        self._kwargs = {}
        self._string = string

    def add(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self._args.extend(args)
        self._kwargs.update(kwargs)

    def get(self):
        return self._string.format(*self._args, **self._kwargs)

Example:

template = '#{a}:{}/{}?{c}'
message = IncrementalFormatting(template)
message.add('abc')
message.add('xyz', a=24)
message.add(c='lmno')
assert message.get() == '#24:abc/xyz?lmno'

Answer 3

Reading @Sam Bourne comment, I modified @SvenMarnach's code to work properly with coercion (like {a!s:>2s}) without writing a custom parser. The basic idea is not to convert to strings but concatenate missing keys with coercion tags.

import string
class MissingKey(object):
    def __init__(self, key):
        self.key = key

    def __str__(self):  # Supports {key!s}
        return MissingKeyStr("".join([self.key, "!s"]))

    def __repr__(self):  # Supports {key!r}
        return MissingKeyStr("".join([self.key, "!r"]))

    def __format__(self, spec): # Supports {key:spec}
        if spec:
            return "".join(["{", self.key, ":", spec, "}"])
        return "".join(["{", self.key, "}"])

    def __getitem__(self, i): # Supports {key[i]}
        return MissingKey("".join([self.key, "[", str(i), "]"]))

    def __getattr__(self, name): # Supports {key.name}
        return MissingKey("".join([self.key, ".", name]))


class MissingKeyStr(MissingKey, str):
    def __init__(self, key):
        if isinstance(key, MissingKey):
            self.key = "".join([key.key, "!s"])
        else:
            self.key = key

class SafeFormatter(string.Formatter):
    def __init__(self, default=lambda k: MissingKey(k)):
        self.default=default

    def get_value(self, key, args, kwds):
        if isinstance(key, str):
            return kwds.get(key, self.default(key))
        else:
            return super().get_value(key, args, kwds)

Use (for example) like this

SafeFormatter().format("{a:<5} {b:<10}", a=10)

The following tests (inspired by tests from @norok2) check the output for the traditional format_map and a safe_format_map based on the class above in two cases: providing correct keywords or without them.

def safe_format_map(text, source):
    return SafeFormatter().format(text, **source)

test_texts = (
    '{a} ',             # simple nothing useful in source
    '{a:5d}',       # formatting
    '{a!s}',        # coercion
    '{a!s:>{a}s}',  # formatting and coercion
    '{a:0{a}d}',    # nesting
    '{d[x]}',       # indexing
    '{d.values}',   # member
)

source = dict(a=10,d=dict(x='FOO'))
funcs = [safe_format_map,
         str.format_map
         #safe_format_alt  # Version based on parsing (See @norok2)
         ]
n = 18
for text in test_texts:
    # full_source = {**dict(b='---', f=dict(g='Oh yes!')), **source}
    # print('{:>{n}s} :   OK   : '.format('str.format_map', n=n) + text.format_map(full_source))
    print("Testing:", text)
    for func in funcs:
        try:
            print(f'{func.__name__:>{n}s} : OK\t\t\t: ' + func(text, dict()))
        except:
            print(f'{func.__name__:>{n}s} : FAILED')

        try:
            print(f'{func.__name__:>{n}s} : OK\t\t\t: ' + func(text, source))
        except:
            print(f'{func.__name__:>{n}s} : FAILED')

Which outputs

Testing: {a} 
   safe_format_map : OK         : {a} 
   safe_format_map : OK         : 10 
        format_map : FAILED
        format_map : OK         : 10 
Testing: {a:5d}
   safe_format_map : OK         : {a:5d}
   safe_format_map : OK         :    10
        format_map : FAILED
        format_map : OK         :    10
Testing: {a!s}
   safe_format_map : OK         : {a!s}
   safe_format_map : OK         : 10
        format_map : FAILED
        format_map : OK         : 10
Testing: {a!s:>{a}s}
   safe_format_map : OK         : {a!s:>{a}s}
   safe_format_map : OK         :         10
        format_map : FAILED
        format_map : OK         :         10
Testing: {a:0{a}d}
   safe_format_map : OK         : {a:0{a}d}
   safe_format_map : OK         : 0000000010
        format_map : FAILED
        format_map : OK         : 0000000010
Testing: {d[x]}
   safe_format_map : OK         : {d[x]}
   safe_format_map : OK         : FOO
        format_map : FAILED
        format_map : OK         : FOO
Testing: {d.values}
   safe_format_map : OK         : {d.values}
   safe_format_map : OK         : <built-in method values of dict object at 0x7fe61e230af8>
        format_map : FAILED
        format_map : OK         : <built-in method values of dict object at 0x7fe61e230af8>

Answer 4

If you're doing a lot of templating and finding Python's built in string templating functionality to be insufficient or clunky, look at Jinja2.

From the docs:

Jinja is a modern and designer-friendly templating language for Python, modelled after Django’s templates.

Answer 5

You can trick it into partial formatting by overwriting the mapping:

import string

class FormatDict(dict):
    def __missing__(self, key):
        return "{" + key + "}"

s = '{foo} {bar}'
formatter = string.Formatter()
mapping = FormatDict(foo='FOO')
print(formatter.vformat(s, (), mapping))

printing

FOO {bar}

Of course this basic implementation only works correctly for basic cases.

Answer 6

My suggestion would be the following (tested with Python3.6):

class Lazymap(object):
       def __init__(self, **kwargs):
           self.dict = kwargs

       def __getitem__(self, key):
           return self.dict.get(key, "".join(["{", key, "}"]))


s = '{foo} {bar}'

s.format_map(Lazymap(bar="FOO"))
# >>> '{foo} FOO'

s.format_map(Lazymap(bar="BAR"))
# >>> '{foo} BAR'

s.format_map(Lazymap(bar="BAR", foo="FOO", baz="BAZ"))
# >>> 'FOO BAR'

Update: An even more elegant way (subclassing dict and overloading __missing__(self, key)) is shown here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/17215533/333403